A Tidalis demo for the truly lazy

In case you still don’t believe me that Tidalis is a truly great puzzle game — thinking man’s Bejeweled, yadda yadda yadda — and you’re just too lazy to download the demo to find out for yourself, then you have one more chance. Arcen Games has created a web version. Click here to try Tidalis Lite in a web browser.

Hold on a sec! Since you’re too lazy to download a demo, I know you’re not going to play the tutorial. So let me tell you what you’re doing. When you left click on a square, it fires a beam of that square’s color three spaces in the direction the arrow is facing. Your objective is to turn arrows so that the colored beam, which will trigger another beam from any similarly colored block it hits, triggers a chain of at least three blocks. So unlike many match-3’s, you can jump blocks.

To turn arrows, right click a block (notice that all the blocks of that color are now highlighted) and drag your mouse. This will drop a marker (M) on the initial block. Now, holding down the right button, you can drag the mouse along several blocks to turn their arrows. Then, when you’ve got it all set up, go back to the original marked block and left click on it. See? Enjoy the little musical tone based on the color and number of blocks you’ve Tidalized.

It may sound complicated, and it kind of is. A little. But whatever you do, don’t start messing with all the different game styles and special blocks until you’ve wrapped your head around the basics. Tidalis is a pretty generous package, but take it slow or you’re just going to blow a cerebral fuse.